I've created this in reply to a post on FlipC's blog.

In Honfleur, near the waterfront, there is a tropical butterfly house. It claims to have the largest collection of live butterflies in France, maybe in Europe, and for a few measly euros you can join the mostly families in there chasing around after the creatures which are so tantalisingly beautiful but don't like to stay still long enough to photograph. The people with cheapo compacts, with glacially slow shutter lag, go home disappointed, but continuous-mode shooting and my macro lens allowed me to pick up some striking pictures.

This year my family went to Honfleur, Normandy. As you can see, we did a bit of karting and some crazy golf. We also went to the beach a lot - the weather was glorious - but I didn't photograph that: for a start, I'm afraid of getting sand in my camera, and also, walking around a beach with a serious camera is likely to get one into trouble.

Since everyone has been writing so much about photography lately, I thought it was a good time to go out and do some. I am a bit out of practice at judging the exposure of sunlit scenes, as many of the swan pictures were shockingly over-exposed. Despite that, I still managed to get some real corkers using my macro lens.

Squirrels are running around on the snow, the sound of birdsong can be picked out from the falling rain, and the first green shoots are freezing on the trees. Yes, it's Spring. On my way out this morning, I noticed a visitor on a windowpane outside, which meant I could photograph it from both sides. The light was less than ideal, but close enough to home to fetch my tripod, I could take these two pictures.